By Tom Gooch, VP Commercial, Neara
Last year’s warning from AEMO on the long-term stability of Australia’s energy network beyond Eraring’s closure made one thing clear: though we’ve made good progress on the generation side of the energy transition equation, the constraint on Australia’s energy transition has shifted to the grid.
Energy policy and governance have markedly accelerated renewable capacity over the last three years, from the Capacity Investment Scheme underwriting large renewable projects to the Solar Sunshot program further up the value chain. But this progress accounts for little if generation cannot connect to the network or be efficiently distributed to consumers.
For Australia to achieve its clean energy ambitions while sustaining grid resiliency and reliability, the industry must pivot. It’s time to over-index on solutions that address the primary barrier to the transition: grid availability and accessibility.
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Consumers are paying the price for an unoptimised grid
Failing to leverage the existing network to its full potential is a lost opportunity for consumers. Australians are bearing the brunt of an unbalanced strategy and are paying more for less reliable energy access. Public and private sector attention must consider all parts of the equation, looking beyond generation alone to unlock network constraints.
Until now, Australia’s clean energy strategy has focused heavily on generation, building large-scale renewable projects, and transmission infrastructure. This is critical work and will underscore the future of Australia’s energy network, but it cannot operate in a silo. Our infrastructure bottleneck is growing, and it is now widely recognised that relying on the transmission project pipeline to be built on time and at cost is no longer realistic. This must be acknowledged, complementing transmission as the centrepiece of the transition strategy with the optimisation of what is already built.
Optimisation must sit alongside new infrastructure builds; the nation’s long-term energy resiliency and reliability depend on this evolution. To unlock the network’s potential, Australia’s public and private sectors must collaborate, removing existing data opacity constraints that have long impaired decision-making on where and how renewable generation can be introduced efficiently into the existing grid to improve system reliability.
Neara’s research shows that 42% of Australian consumers are willing to pay more for stable and resilient energy access despite rising bills. But solutions to improve access and drive down costs are already available. Modelling indicates that within New South Wales alone, there is upwards of 10GW of untapped capacity. With targeted upgrades and a shift from traditional network management, Australia could rapidly inject clean energy languishing in the grid connection queue to boost network capacity.
As coal retires, reliability rests on the network
For decades, energy system security has been a by-product of coal-fired power generation. But as aging systems are retired or withdrawn from the network, pressure to accelerate the integration of renewable energy into the network rises. In 2025, one-third of New South Wales’ coal power supply was offline for repairs during a heatwave, leaving thousands of households without power as backup batteries worked to meet surging power demand.
Every summer with extreme heatwaves, intense storms and flood threats is now a test of network resilience. Leaving the network underutilised entrenches the challenges confronting both the industry and consumers, yet the current approach to system stability—renewable energy, connected by transmission and distribution, and firmed with storage—does not account for a key component: hidden capacity in the existing network.
Robust digital modelling and data transparency enable strategic coordination across the energy ecosystem, directing investment where it is most urgently needed and can deliver the most value. Failing to invest in the existing network concurrently with new infrastructure developments will leave the network unable to integrate and manage the growing volume of clean energy and speed and scale. The work of government and industry to propel the clean energy transition forward through generation will account for little if it cannot impact the system quickly and reduce the growing impact on Australian households.
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Unlocking the network is key to a faster, cheaper, and stable transition
The network holds gigawatts of untapped potential, but unlocking it requires a shift in both policy and execution. Focusing on strategies that solve Australia’s short-term energy transition and security goals cannot be a supporting component. By extracting more from existing assets, Australia will speed up connections, deliver more energy at a fraction of the cost, and with minimal disruption.
Optimisation of the network is not a ‘nice to have’ but must lie at the core of Australia’s energy transition future. The outlook of Australia’s energy resilience hinges on this change.
